Maris O'Rourke is a former Secretary for Education for New Zealand and the first Director of Education for The World Bank. She has worked in, or on, education in up to 50 developing countries. She is also an accomplished poet and her first collection Singing with Both Throats was published by David Ling Publishing in 2013. She lives and works in Mt Eden in Auckland. Visual artist, painter, printmaker and film director Claudia Pond Eyley was born in Matamata, New Zealand and attended schools in Montreal, Canada and New York. She returned to New Zealand to attend the School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in the mid-1960s and continues to work from her studio in Mt Eden.